The Internet is perhaps the most important information access mechanism to be introduced to the general public in the 20th Century. Individuals currently use the Internet to obtain information such as news, sports scores, stock quotes, and other public and private interest materials. Additionally, the Internet provides an endless abundance of images, audio, video and data files which can be downloaded used and shared between individuals.
In addition to obtaining information and other materials, the Internet provides a quick way of communicating with other individuals electronically. Individuals can transmit messages to other individuals located at practically any place in the world and the message will be received in a matter of minutes, if not sooner.
Typically, an individual can communicate electronically by typing in text to a message and addressing the message to the intended recipient(s). Generally, during delivery a message sent by a user often travels through several different computers, servers, and other computing devices which make-up the Internet before it reaches its ultimate destination. In addition to typing text into a message, a user can manually attach files, documents, and other pieces of information which will arrive with the message.
With the evolution of electronic messages as a frequently-used way of communicating, and the computation and functionality available over the Internet there is a desire to integrate the two, thereby allowing computation to be performed and files, images, audio, and other information attached to a message being delivered without the involvement of a user.
Until now, if a user wished to send a message to a person who understands a different language, the user typically would first translate the message to the recipient's native language prior to sending. There are many ways of converting text from one language to another. For example, there are applications available over the Internet which allow a user to input text in one language and select a desired language translation and the application converts the text.
To send a message in a different language using the above example, the user would first access the Internet, locate the application which will perform the computation, such as www.altavista.com/babelfish, insert the desired text to be converted, copy the resulting translation, then access a message transmission application, paste the converted text to the message and then finally send the message.
Additionally, until now, if the user wished to have a To-Do list record that they are awaiting a reply to the message they would, in addition to the above procedure, manually access their To-Do list and include such a reminder.
Similar to the above examples, there are countless computations and functions which are available over the Internet which a person must manually access to receive the benefit of these applications.
Therefore, it is desirable to produce a system which can integrate the computation and functionality of the Internet with electronic message transmission to allow computation and functionality to be performed on and attached to messages without manual involvement from a user.